Govt Can Change India’s International Image By Changing Its Conduct, Not By Issuing Hashtags
Today, sadly for all of us, the opposite is true. Pick up any major newspaper abroad, whether on the right (like the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times) or the left (like the Guardian or the Washington Post) and all you see from and about India are critical articles and editorials. The drumbeat of daily reporting, as well as the op-ed columns, is relentlessly negative, recording heavy-handed police tactics against the farmers, internet shutdowns, orders to Twitter to suspend critical accounts, cases against journalists — even (if I may point out) five FIRs against an Opposition MP for a deleted tweet.
It is because of such behaviour by the authorities that India is increasingly being seen as bigoted and intolerant, led by a chauvinist government that is wilfully driving sectarian wedges between its people and promoting a Hindutva majoritarianism that has no appeal to the world…